Press

A new display at the Penn Museum features "Art from the Archives: Northwest Coast and Inuit Prints and Drawings." Comprised of artwork from our archives, this installation offers colorful views into the lives of this region's indigenous people.

The Penn Museum offers a special double ticket with the Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, good for discounted admission to both Museums. Now, a new permanent exhibition at the Mütter Museum offers another great reason to take advantage of this deal.

This year's Philly Geek Awards are just around the corner. Among this year's nominees is Dr. Pat McGovern, Scientific Director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Project at the Penn Museum, and author of Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages. Dr. McGovern is in the running for "Scientist of the Year," in recognition of his work researching and identifying ancient fermented beverages, several of which have been recreated through collaboration with Dogfish Head Craft Brewery.

Mimi Stillman, acclaimed flutist, founder and Artistic Director of Philadelphia's Dolce Suono Ensemble, and a University of Pennsylvania alumna (Masters in History, 2003; ABD for Ph.D., 2006), has embarked on an ambitious musical adventure. Stillman's project entitled "Syrinx Journey" honors composer Claude Debussy's 150th birthday. Since August 22, 2012, Stillman has performed Debussy's "Syrinx for Solo Flute" every day in various locations around the world. She recently inquired about including the Penn Museum as part of this incredible homage—and was invited to bring her flute and her hauntingly beautiful two-and-a-half-minute "Syrinx" to the galleries on Monday, August 5—just weeks before her year-long project concludes.

JUNE 2013—As a repository of wide-ranging, international collections, original field notes and archival data from roughly 300 archaeological and anthropological expeditions around the world, the Penn Museum in Philadelphia is committed to open, global, digital access for scholars and the public. In 2012, celebrating the Museum's 125th anniversary, the Penn Museum launched two online projects to expand access to its collections and share information about its research history: the online Collections Database and interactive Research Map and Timeline. While those projects continue to grow, the Museum has partnered with Digital Antiquity to further expand research data access to scholars.

Increased Data, Accessibility on www.penn.museum

Launched in January 2012, the online Collections Database has gradually expanded over the past 18 months with a wealth of additional content. It now contains more than 332,851 object records representing 692,850 objects, and more than 90,000 images illustrating 34,067 object records. In addition to the growth in available data, the functionality of the online interface has also been improved, allowing more refined searching and browsing of the Museum’s collections, and—new this month—the ability for online visitors to download the Museum’s collections metadata to sort, study, and use it to suit their own research interests under a CC BY 3.0 Creative Commons license.

NEW BIOMOLECULAR ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCEPOINTS TO THE BEGINNINGS OF VINICULTURE IN FRANCE* * *9,000 Year Old Ancient Near Eastern "Wine Culture," Traveling Land and Sea,Reaches Southern Coastal France, Via Ancient Etruscans of Italy, in 6th-­5th Century BCE

PHILADELPHIA, PA June 3, 2013—France is renowned the world over as a leader in the crafts of viticulture and winemaking—but the beginnings of French viniculture have been largely unknown, until now.

Imported ancient Etruscan amphoras and a limestone press platform, discovered at the ancient port site of Lattara in southern France, have provided the earliest known biomolecular archaeological evidence of grape wine and winemaking—and point to the beginnings of a Celtic or Gallic vinicultural industry in France circa 500-400 BCE. Details of the discovery are published as "The Beginning of Viniculture in France" in the June 3, 2013 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Dr. Patrick McGovern, Director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and author of Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture (Princeton University Press, 2006) is the lead author on the paper, which was researched and written in collaboration with colleagues from France and the United States.

Bone Tumor Identified in 120,000-Year-Old Rib of NeandertalFrom Famous Cave Excavation Site of Krapina in Central Europe

PHILADELPHIA, PA, June 2013—The first-known definitive case of a benign bone tumor has been discovered in the rib of a young Neandertal who lived about 120,000 years ago in what is now present-day Croatia. The bone fragment, which comes from the famous archaeological cave site of Krapina, contains by far the earliest bone tumor ever identified in the archaeological record. Details of the tumor confirmation, announced by an international research team led by Penn Museum Associate Curator and Paleoanthropologist Janet Monge, is available in a research paper, "Fibrous dysplasia in a 120,000+ year old Neandertal from Krapina, Croatia," in the online scientific journal PLOS ONE.

Penn Museum is fairly new to Instagram, and we're been loving all the great Museum photos that our visitors have posted.

We want to see more! This May, we're featuring a special contest to find the best Penn Museum photo on Instagram. The prize: two FREE double tickets good for admission to the Penn Museum and the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia!

More than 400 people visited the Penn Museum Wednesday evening, April 10, for the Philadelphia READS Community Night, presented in conjunction with the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance’s GroundSwell initiative. The event marked the official kick off of a book drive for Philadelphia children. Kids and families enjoyed music, dance, and poetry performances, created their own poems, learned how to write in ancient Sumerian and in Egyptian hieroglyphs—and heard stories from books—as read by Museum curators and collections keepers throughout the many-cultured galleries. By night’s end, the Museum had collected more than 350 books for PHILADELPHIA READS, a non-profit organization that provides free books to Philadelphia pre-school and elementary school educators for use in their classrooms and programs.

Richard Dawkins received the Penn Museum's Wilton Krogman Award for Distinguished Achievement in Biological Anthropology Wednesday evening, March 12, 2013. The award was presented by Julian Siggers, Williams Director, Penn Museum, at the sold-out 2013 Bicentennial Philomatheon Society Annual Oration, held in the 1,500-seat Irvine Auditorium on the University of Pennsylvania campus.

RICHARD DAWKINS TO RECEIVEPENN MUSEUM'S WILTON KROGMAN AWARD MARCH 12* * *Sold Out Philomatheon Society Lecture, Where Award will be Presented, is Featured Part of University of Pennsylvania's "Year of Proof"